Maybe Paulson was dreaming. Maybe they all were.
If Richards was dreaming these days, it was about the nuns. He hadn’t cared for that part very much at all. Way back when, so long ago it seemed like a different life entirely, he’d gone to Catholic school. A bunch of withered old bitches who liked to slap and hit, but he’d respected them; they meant what they said and did it. So shooting nuns went against the grain. Most of them had just slept through it. But there was one who’d woken up. The way she opened her eyes made him think she’d been expecting him. He’d done two of them already; she was the third. She opened her eyes in bed and he saw, in the pale light coming through the window, that she wasn’t some dried-up seahorse like the others but young, and not bad-looking. Then she closed her eyes and murmured something, a prayer probably, and Richards shot her through a pillow.
He’d come up one nun short. Lacey Antoinette Kudoto, the crazy one. He’d read her psych workup from the diocese. Nobody would believe her story, and even if they did, the chain was broken in western Oklahoma with a bunch of dead cops shot by rogue FBI agents and a ten-year-old Chevy Tahoe you’d need tweezers and about a thousand years to reassemble.
Still, he hadn’t liked shooting that nun.
Richards was sitting in his office, watching the security monitors. The time stamp read 22:26. The sweeps were in and out of Containment with the rabbit carts, but nobody was having any of it. The fast had started with Zero but had spread to the others since Carter had shown up, maybe a couple of days after. This was a puzzler, but in any event, if Special Weapons had its way, the sticks would all be eating soon enough. By which time Richards hoped he’d be ice-fishing on Hudson Bay or digging out snow for an igloo.
He looked at the monitor for Amy’s chamber. There was Wolgast, sitting at her bedside. They’d brought in a little portable toilet with a nylon curtain, and a cot where he could sleep. But he hadn’t slept at all, just sat in the chair by her bed day after day, touching her hand, talking to her. What he was saying, Richards didn’t care to know. And yet he’d find himself watching them for hours, almost as much as he watched Babcock.
He turned his attention to Babcock’s chamber. Giles Babcock, Number One. Babcock was hanging upside down from the bars, his eyes, that weird orange color, shooting straight at the camera, his jaws quietly working, chewing the air. I am yours and you are mine, Richards. We are all meant for someone, and I am meant for you.
Yeah, Richards thought. Fuck you, too.
Richards’s com buzzed against his waist.
“This is the front gate,” the voice on the other end said. “We’ve got a woman out here.”
Richards examined the monitor that showed the guardhouse. Two sentries, one holding the com to his ear, the other with his weapon unslung. The woman was standing just outside the circle of light around the hut.
“So?” he said. “Get rid of her.”
“That’s the thing, sir,” the sentry said. “She won’t go. She doesn’t look like she has a car, either. I think she actually walked.”
Richards was looking hard at the monitor. He saw the sentry drop the com to the ground and unsling his weapon.
“Hey!” Richards heard him say. “Get back here! Stop or I’ll fire!”
Richards heard the pop of his weapon. The second soldier took off running into the dark. Two more shots, the sound muffled through the com where it lay in the mud. Ten seconds passed, twenty. Then they stepped back into the light. Richards could tell from their body language that they’d lost her.
The first sentry retrieved his com and looked up into the camera.
“Sorry. She got away somehow. You want us to go look for her?”
Jesus. This was all Richards needed. “Who was she?”
“Black woman, some kind of accent,” the sentry explained. “Said she was looking for someone named Wolgast.”
He didn’t die. Not right away and not as the days went by. And on the third day, he told her the story.
—There once was a little girl, Wolgast told her. More little even than you. Her name was Eva, and her mother and father loved her very much. The night after she was born, her father took her from her bassinet in the room at the hospital where they were all sleeping and held her, her bare skin against his own, and from that moment on she was inside him, really and truly. His girl was inside him, in his heart.
Somebody was probably watching, listening. The camera was over his shoulder. He didn’t care. Fortes came and went. He took her blood and changed her bags, and Wolgast talked, through the hours of the third day, telling it all to Amy, the story he’d told no one.
—And then something happened. It was her heart. Her heart, you see—he showed her the place on his chest where this was—began to shrink. While around her, her body grew, her heart did not, and then the rest of her stopped growing too. He would have given her his heart if he could, because it was hers to begin with. It had always been, and always would be, hers. But he couldn’t do this for her, he couldn’t do anything, no one could, and when she died, he died with her. The man that he was, was gone. And the man and the woman couldn’t love each other anymore, because their love was nothing but sadness now, and missing their little girl.
He told her the story, told it all. And when the story was ending, the day was ending with it.
—And then you came, Amy, he said. Then I found you. Do you see? It was like she’d come back to me. Come back, Amy. Come back, come back, come back.
He lifted his face. He opened his eyes.
And Amy opened hers, too.
THIRTEEN
Lacey in the woods: she moved at a crouch, darting tree to tree, putting distance between herself and the soldiers. The air was cold and thin, sharp in her lungs. She stood with her back against a tree and let herself breathe.
She wasn’t afraid. The soldiers’ bullets were nothing. She’d heard them ripping through the underbrush, but they hadn’t even come close. And so small! Bullets—how could bullets hurt a person? After the long distance she’d traveled, against such odds, how could they hope to scare her away with something as meager as that?
She peeked around the barrel-like trunk. She could see, through the undergrowth, the glow of the sentry hut, hear the two men talking, their voices carrying easily across the moonless night. Black woman, some kind of accent, and the other one saying over and over, Shit, he’s going to have our ass for this. How the fuck did we miss her? Huh? How the fuck! You didn’t even fucking aim!
Whoever they were talking to on the phone, they were afraid of him. But this man—Lacey knew he was nothing, no one. And the soldiers, they were like children, without minds of their own. Like the ones in the field, so long ago. She remembered how, through the long hours, they’d done and done. They’d thought they were taking something from her—she could see it in the dark smiles streaked across their mouths, taste it in their sour breath on her face—and it was true, they had. But now she’d forgiven them and taken this thing back, which was Lacey herself, and more besides. She closed her eyes. But you are a shield around me, O LORD, she thought:
You bestow glory on me and lift up my head.
To the LORD I cry aloud
and he answers me from his holy hill.
Selah.
I lie down and sleep;
I wake again, because the LORD sustains me.
I will not fear the tens of thousands
drawn up against me on every side.
Arise, O LORD!
Deliver me, O my God!
Strike all my enemies on the jaw;
break the teeth of the wicked.
She was moving through the trees again. The man on the other end of the sentry’s phone: he would send more soldiers to hunt her down. And yet a feeling like joy was coursing through her—a new, nimble energy, richer and deeper than anything she’d felt in her life. It had been building through the weeks as she made her way to—well, where? She didn’t know what it was called. In her mind it was simply the place
where Amy was.
She’d taken some buses. She’d ridden awhile in the back of someone’s truck with two Labrador retrievers and a crate of baby pigs. Some days she’d awakened wherever she was and known it was a day to walk, just walk. From time to time she ate or, if it felt right, knocked on a door and asked if it would be all right if she slept in a bed. And the woman who answered the door—for it was always a woman, no matter what door Lacey knocked on—would say, Of course, come right in, and lead her to a room with a bed all made up and waiting, without saying one more word about it.
And then one day she was climbing a long mountain road, the glory of God in the sunshine all around her, and knew that she’d arrived.
Wait, the voice said. Wait for sunset, Sister Lacey. The way will show you the way.
And so it did: the way showed the way. More men were pursuing her now; each footfall, each snap of a twig, each breath was as a gunshot, louder than loud, telling Lacey where they were. They were spread out behind her in a wide line, six of them, pointing their guns into the darkness, at nothing, at a place where Lacey had stood but stood no longer.
She came to a break in the trees. A road. To the left, two hundred yards distant, stood the sentry hut, bathed in its halo of light. To the right the road turned into the trees and descended sharply. From somewhere far below, was the sound of the river.
Nothing about this place revealed its meaning to her; and yet she knew to wait. She dropped and pressed her belly against the forest floor. The soldiers were behind her, fifty yards, forty, thirty.
She heard the low, labored sound of a diesel engine, its pitch dropping as the driver downshifted to ascend the final rise. Slowly it pushed its light and noise toward her. She rose to a crouch as its headlights burst over the crest of the hill. Some kind of Army truck. The pitch of the engine changed as the driver shifted again and began to gather speed.
Now?
And the voice said: Now.
She was up and running with all her might, aiming her body at the rear of the truck. A wide bumper and, above it, an open cargo area, concealed by swaying canvas. For a moment it seemed as if she’d moved too late, that the truck would race away, but in a burst of speed she caught it. Her hands found the lip of the gate, one bare foot and then the other left the road. Lacey Antoinette Kudoto, airborne: she was up and over and she was rolling in.
Her head hit the floor of the cargo compartment with a thump.
Boxes. The truck was full of boxes.
She scrambled to the front, against the rear wall of the cab. The truck slowed again as it approached the sentry hut. Lacey held her breath. Whatever happened now would happen; there was nothing she could do.
The hiss of air brakes; the truck jerked to a halt.
“Let me see the manifest.”
The voice belonged to the first sentry, the one who’d told Lacey to stop. The man-boy with his gun. She could discern, from the angle of his voice, that he was standing on the running board. The air suddenly tanged with cigarette smoke.
“You shouldn’t smoke.”
“Who are you, my mother?”
“Read your own manifest, dickhead. You’re carrying enough ordnance to blow us all halfway to Mars.”
A snickering laugh from the passenger seat.
“It’s your funeral. You see anyone down the road?”
“You mean, like a civilian?”
“No, I mean the abominable snowman. Yes, a civilian. A black woman, about five-six, wearing a skirt.”
“You’re kidding.” A pause. “We didn’t see anyone. It’s dark. I don’t know.”
The sentry climbed down from the running board. “Hang on while I check the back.”
Don’t move, Lacey, the voice said. Don’t move.
The canvas flaps opened, closed, opened again. A beam of light shot into the back of the truck.
Close your eyes, Lacey.
She did. She felt the beam of the flashlight rake her face: once, twice, three times.
You are a shield around me, O Lord—
She heard two hard pounds on the side of the truck, right beside her ear.
“Clear!”
The truck pulled away.
Richards wasn’t one bit happy. The crazy nun—what the blue fuck was she doing here?
He decided not to tell Sykes. Not until he knew more about it. He’d sent six men. Six! Just fucking shoot her! But they’d come back with nothing. He’d sent them back out, around the perimeter. Just find her! Put a bullet in her! Is that so hard?
The business with Wolgast and the girl had gone on too long. And Doyle—why was he still alive? Richards checked his watch: 00:03. He retrieved his weapon from the bottom drawer of his desk and checked the load and tucked it against his spine. He left his office and took the back stairs to Level 1 and exited through the loading dock.
Doyle was stashed over in civilian housing; the room had belonged to one of the dead sweeps. The sentry at the door was dozing in his chair.
“Get up,” Richards said.
The soldier jerked awake. His eyes floated with incomprehension; he didn’t look like he knew where he was. When he saw Richards standing above him, he rose quickly to attention. “Sorry, sir.”
“Open the door.”
The soldier keyed in the code and stepped away.
“You can go,” Richards said.
“Sir?”
“If you’re going to sleep, do it in the barracks.”
A look of relief. “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”
The soldier jogged down the catwalk, away. Richards pushed the door open. Doyle was sitting on the end of the bed, his hands folded in his lap, looking at the empty square on the wall where the TV had once been. An untouched tray of food rested on the floor, exuding a faint smell of rotting fish. As Doyle lifted his face, a thin smile creased his lips.
“Richards. You fuck.”
“Let’s go.”
Doyle sighed and slapped his knees. “You know, he was right about you. Wolgast, I mean. I was just sitting here thinking, When is my old friend Richards going to pay me a visit?”
“If it was up to me, I would have come sooner.”
Doyle looked like he was about to laugh. Richards had never seen such a good mood in a man who had to know what was about to happen to him. Doyle shook his head ruefully, still smiling. “I should have gone for those shotguns.”
Richards withdrew his weapon and thumbed the safety. “It would have saved some time, yes.”
He led Doyle across the compound, toward the lights of the Chalet. It was possible Doyle would take off running, but how far would he get? And, Richards wondered, why hadn’t he asked about Wolgast or the girl?
“Tell me one thing,” Doyle said, as they reached the parking area. A handful of cars were still there, belonging to the lab’s night shift. “Is she here yet?”
“Is who here?”
“Lacey.”
Richards stopped.
“So she is,” Doyle said, and chuckled to himself. “Richards, you should see your face.”
“What do you know about it?”
It was strange. A cool, blue light seemed to be shining from Doyle’s eyes. Even in the ambient glow of the parking lot, Richards could see it. Like looking into a camera at the moment the shutter opened.
“Funny thing, but you know?” Doyle said, and lifted his gaze toward the dark shapes of the trees. “I could hear her coming.”
Grey.
He was on L4. On the monitor, the glowing shape of Zero.
Grey. It’s time.
He remembered then, remembered all of it at last: his dreams and all those nights he’d spent in Containment, watching Zero, listening to his voice, hearing the stories he told. He remembered New York City and the girl and all the others, every night a new one, and the feel of the darkness moving through him and the soft joy in his jaw as he flew down upon them. He was Grey and not Grey, he was Zero and not Zero, he was everywhere and nowhere. He rose and faced the glass.
It’s time.
It was funny, Grey thought. Not funny ha-ha but funny strange, the whole idea of time. He’d thought it was one thing but it was actually another. It wasn’t a line but a circle, and even more; it was a circle made of circles made of circles, each lying on top of the other, so that every moment was next to every other moment, all at once. And once you knew this you couldn’t unknow it. Such as now, the way he could see events as they were about to unfold, as if they’d already happened, because in a way they had.
He opened the air lock. His suit hung limply on the wall. He had to close the first door to open the second, the second to open the third, but there was nothing that said he had to put the suit on, or that he had to be alone.
The second door, Grey.
He stepped into the inner chamber. Above his head, the showerhead hung like the face of some monstrous flower. The camera was watching him, but no one was on the other side; he knew that. And he was hearing other voices now, not just Zero’s, and he knew who these were, too.
The third door, Grey.
Oh, it was such happiness, he thought. Such relief. This letting go. This putting down and away. Day by day he’d felt it happening, the good Grey and the bad Grey coming together, forming something new, something inevitable. The next new Grey, the one who could forgive.
I forgive you, Grey.
He turned the wide handle. The gate was open. Zero uncurled before him in the dark. Grey felt his breath on his face, on his eyes and mouth and chin; he felt his hammering heart. Grey thought of his father, on the snow. He was weeping, weeping with happiness, weeping with terror, weeping weeping weeping, and as Zero’s bite found the soft place on his neck where the blood moved, he knew at last what the tenth rabbit was.
The tenth rabbit was him.
FOURTEEN
It happened fast. Thirty-two minutes for one world to die, another to be born.
“What did you say?” Richards said, and then he heard—both of them heard—the sound of the alarm. The one that was never, ever supposed to ring, a great, atonal buzzing that ricocheted across the open compound so that it seemed to come from everywhere at once.
The Passage: A Novel Page 26
